Online Reputation Management Strategy
Posted by admin on March, 14th 2011
Carrying on from our last blog post about online reputation management and how to monitor online chat about your brand, we are posting a quick blog about responding to discussions about your brand.
With social media, the purpose is to engage with customers and build relationships. However, companies that get it wrong can end up making things worse with customers who have a grievance. Here are a few platforms internet users may use to write negative things about your company and what you may be able to learn from the mistakes of others.
Reviews – Trip Advisor in particular is a massive reviewing engine. Reviews can even be indexed into Google and show up on Google Maps. Businesses are offered the right of reply but this could play out badly. If you respond to every negative review then you run the risk of looking defensive and obsessive, reply to none you look as though you don’t care. The trick is to try and identify the disgruntled customers and approach to make amends. However, some customers are never happy and if this is the case, it isn’t unreasonable to calmly point out that they had the opportunity at the time of service to rectify their problem. Other review sites such as Reevoo and Review Centre are meant to be independent, it’s pretty poor show to submit fake reviews so encourage happy customers to speak on your behalf.
Facebook Pages – Here, you are certainly expected to start the conversation with customers and those who like your business page. When talking to customers on Facebook, maintain a professional distance and remain calm and respectful… unlike Nestle last year created a massive ‘social media fail’ case study. An employee who had been authorised to use the page told fans of the brand that using Nestle’s trademarks in their Facebook profile pictures was a copyright infringement and they would be removed from the board. The curt and unfriendly remarks is an indicator to anyone working in social media that the best advice is to remain friendly and fair in every situation, allowing people to express their reasonable views.
Twitter – Refer negative ‘@’ mentions to customer services and try to deal with the customer through Twitter. Giving your customers a telephone number will irritate them further. If your company hasn’t been directly ‘@’ mentioned, it may be best to take note but not act, otherwise you risk blowing up a situation that may have otherwise disappeared.
Blogs - Blogs complaining about customer service regularly rank in Google. Unless they have been specifically brought to your attention by other customers, it may be advisable to quietly monitor, after all, do you want to draw attention to a website that is negative about your brand? Budget airline Ryanair found this out when it took the owner of www.ihateryanair.co.uk to court for trademark infringements. Sledgehammer to crack a nut, anyone?
For internet marketing including online reputation management, contact JPR today to discuss your requirements.
Related Posts
- Online Reputation Management – Why your PR and SEO Agencies need to work together
Your marketing department orchestrate your short term campaigns to get customers through the door, your SEO company gets you ranking for all your main key terms for web visibility and your PR company make sure that the world sees your business in a positive light. They all have their own functions and none of their [...]
- Is your Internet Marketing Strategy Fit for Purpose?
Is you social media strategy lacking purpose? Are you only measuring your Internet Marketing successes by number of visits and bounce rate according to Google Analytics?Too many companies dip their toe in the social media pool, jump back and shudder because at first it is cold and scary. With the internet, people are so quick [...]
- ASA Online Ads
The UK Code of Non-Broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (CAP Code) which came in to force on 1st September 2010 (with a 6 month grace period) now applies to all online marketing communications in the UK as from 1st March 2011. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has extended its remit to include ALL [...]
- Dominos Pizza
According to the Daily Mail last week, Dominos pizza add a 900% mark up on a large margarita pizza. Without going into a discussion about how much of your £11.99 is pure profit for the takeaway giant, in the JPR office we got thinking about Dominos pizza, our late nights in the office and voucher [...]
- Graham and Green, Design and Online Strategy
Graham and Green are an established and well know London retail Brand. We have recently undertaken the task of carefully redesigning and re – architecturing the current web platform to improve sales volumes, website conversion rates and search engine penetration. We are working with the team at Graham and Green planning and structuring the internet [...]
Find out more about Juno Blinds
Remote control and electric blinds by Controliss
More than being a poor show, fake reviews are actually illegal. It’s not very well known, but the 2008 Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations outlaws the practice of staff writing reviews pretending to be customers.
I completely agree with your point on the use/abuse of “right to reply”. I work at Reevoo, where we’re approaching this from two directions. We offer retailers or brands an on-page “brand response”, which allows them to engage with reviewers to correct misapprehensions, apologise for problems, and so on. We also have our review moderation team watch out for reviews mentioning problems that our partners might like to address by getting in touch directly with the reviewer. We find that, when provided with both a public and private channel, our partners have a good natural instinct for restraining themselves from “over-engaging”.
Reevoo is very definitely independent, by the way! Our business is founded upon our impartiality, so we take it very seriously.
Posted by Kat Matfield on 14 Mar 2011